Dominic 🇪🇺 🏳️‍🌈 🇺🇦

Cover of the novel “The Dice Man”

May I recommend this book? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dic... 🎲

Only my high-schooler used AI tools, but honestly he has a healthier relationship with the tools than most tech industry people in their 30s. The kids know how not to cook their brains.

A rubbish bin with “SAPIENS” written on the lid

🗑️ Well, I guess that’s it for Homo Sapiens! We had a good run, but I am reliably informed the future is all #AI.

Typoes are the new status sybmol. (Yes, we know.) CEOs and other powerful people love to send short, typo-ridden emails. The Epstein Files show us this. But in an AI world, typos can also be good.

Wherever this trend started of powerful people writing without capitalisation or (seemingly) a spell-checker, at least nowadays it requires significant effort to type like this. Disabling all of those assistive features tells me it’s not laziness, it’s signalling. @katienotopoulous.bsky.social

Moof!

“What are the lessons from the Parisian revolution?

First, pushing out cars improves life for most inhabitants.

Lesson 2 is that banishing cars doesn’t hurt an urban economy.

Lesson 3: car-free cities must offer people good alternative ways to travel. Paris itself does.”

@simonkuper.bsky.social

Large poster in the Brompton facility with an image of a Brompton bike and the tagline “refuel cities”, designed like a sign at a gas station with the prices of unleaded, super, and diesel fuel all really high, and the cost of cycling and coffee both marked as free.

Meanwhile, at the @bromptonbicycle.bsky.social facility…

This is the whole quantified self movement all over again. Yes, I know I didn’t get enough sleep last night; that’s because I was up half the night with one vomiting kid, and then still had to get up in time to get the other kids to school. Putting a number on it does not help me.

It’s always a relief when a terrible company is in the news for doing something idiotic enough to really stick out from the recently-raised baseline, and I can go on LinkedIn and confirm that I don’t know anyone involved.

Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo: ‘A city’s creativity doesn’t depend on cars. That’s the 20th century’ Accused of desecrating the French capital, the politician wants more bikes, green spaces and social housing

“A city’s creativity doesn’t depend on cars. That’s the 20th century. We’re in the 21st.”— Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo.

No matter what happens in the Paris election in 4 days, the world’s cities owe @annehidalgo.bsky.social a huge debt of gratitude.

The boldest, most inspiring mayor I’ve seen.

And of course they deliberately try to evade "Hide Distracting Items" and similar features, because of course they do.

Rage face screaming "FFFFFFUUUUUU"

ME: YouTube, show fewer Shorts
YOUTUBE: Got it boss, fewer Shorts, right away boss
ME: *reloads page*
YOUTUBE: Here you go boss, two rows of Shorts in the first four rows of videos, just like you wanted boss

If I can deal with half my appointments shifting around for the next three weeks, you can deal with the sun appearing and disappearing when different numbers are displayed on your phone. But we’ll do this again in the autumn.

DST discourse is exhausting. Look, all time is fake; the UK is not in a different timezone than France, let alone Spain or Portugal, for any calendrically logical reason. Blame the railways if you must, but conventionally-accepted time was needed, and this is what we have.

Insider Trading Is Going to Get People Killed War markets are a national-security threat.

“Prediction markets” (aka gambling on real-world events for degenerates and inside traders) are the new War Thunder forums when it comes to leaking classified material — except now, the leak comes even *before* the event. Well done, everyone, no notes.

Like, if you live somewhere that is not extremely remote and you have to drive umpteen miles to buy toothpaste, your problem isn't that the country or the city is big; it's that they've put a highway outside your house instead of a shop.

Possibly related: I’ve noticed that many new IC cars hide their exhausts, imitating EV design — as opposed to the recent trend of fake or exaggerated exhaust tips.
If you want an automatic gearbox, torque on demand, and a quiet cabin, an EV is just better.

Port ability A brief thought about the MacBook Neo.

Honestly, I am less outraged by the weakness of the second port on the new MacBook Neo, and more intrigued by the possibility it opens upfront a future iPad Pro with multiple ports.

This Era Of Mercedes Cars Can't Die Fast Enough - The Autopian I drive the coolest new Mercedes-Benz this side of a G-Class, and discover that Mercedes might be losing its way.

When people ask me if I don’t miss the sound of an internal-combustion engine now I have an EV, the answer is no — because the last IC car I had that made a nice noise, I sold in 2006 (Alfa 156 V6 😭). Current IC cars use resonators and even speakers to make noise, and honestly, what is the point?

Yes, hello, is that God? Yeah, hi. I have a complaint. You gave me this brain that’s designed for finding berries and avoiding lions and now people are ‘just circling back’ to see if we can ‘move the needle’ on ‘key initiatives’? NONE of those things are berries.

That, or something like that, is my worry if this situation goes on much longer, enough that people try to restore some semblance of normal service. A tanker getting hit while trying to get through the Strait is to obvious scenario, but what else could go wrong?

Oh no, they’ve copied the monochrome flag thing from the US now?
At least that’s one thing our local lot literally can’t adopt; three stripes of grey-white-grey matches too many countries!

Plain old search works *better* in many cases. Sometimes “0 results found” is exactly what I want, not a confidently-delivered analogue of what a result might look like if it existed (which it doesn’t).

I feel like we're forgetting that ctrl+f still exists and works really well... simply because a bunch of shills want us to put money in their AI boondoggle.

Here's my idea about writing:

If you hate to write, don't write.

And here's my idea about reading:

If you can't read, STFU about writing.

Hasbro’s CEO on J.K. Rowling. We just published our new Decoder interview with Chris Cocks, the head of Hasbro. I asked him directly about how he thinks about author J.K. Rowling’s politics and what it’s done to the Harry Potter f...

cannot stress enough that "separate the art from the artist" was meant for private individuals reconciling the art they love with its flawed creators and not meant for the ceo of a company driving a dump truck of money up to a bigot's front porch

www.theverge.com/podcast/8914...

Yeah, real mystery why people don’t have more kids, given how expensive they are — especially three of them.
I didn’t want a Porsche anyway, he lies.

EUROPA amp ITALIA Europe vs Italy Bruno Bozzetto Official) (1) COFFEE YouTube video by Restaurant Gaudi

Quite apart from the gender thing, Italy is the home of the overly-elaborate coffee order, as per this classic piece of animation: www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcAw...

This is the time of chaos, where half my recurring meetings move by an hour while the other half don’t, depending on which side of the Atlantic the meeting was created on. Three weeks of this — just long enough for the rebound to be chaotic too!

I know a couple who met on *Usenet*. Lovely people, still together.